The Fourth Side of the Triangle by Ellery Queen

Author:Ellery Queen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2012-01-15T12:12:41+00:00

* * *

The waiting was a stasis, the blood piling up in the vessel to the bursting point, the question being would there be resolution and relief before the complete blockage and eruption. Reporters spotted Lutetia McKell and crowded round her, to her distress, until Richard M. Heaton rescued her; none of them dared leave the courtroom while the jury deliberated; they sat and talked, or were mute, thinking their own thoughts.

Heaton tended to be optimistic, O’Brien noncommittal (“I never specu-late on what a jury will or will not do”), except to point out that District Attorney De Angelus had not left the room, indicating the prosecution’s belief that the jury would not be out long—for whatever that was worth; De Angelus himself was the recipient of a message, delivered to him by messenger, to which he dashed off an immediate reply, and sank back only to be aroused by another messenger with another envelope.

“He’s kept so very busy, isn’t he?” said Lutetia. Then she began nibbling at her handkerchief.

So Dane and Judy captured her attention by telling the story of their original unsuccessful search for the bar and bartender, and of their visit to Ellery Queen.

“That’s his father, Inspector Queen, who just came in and spoke to the D.A.,” Robert O’Brien pointed out.

And of the lightning development of the hunt thereafter.

Lutetia was touched. “Margaret is so faithful,” she said. “You know, Dane, how she worships your father. I suppose all along she’s known a great deal more than any of us, from this and that picked up at random.

She must have realized something was wrong when she found that outlandish tan suit in Ashton’s bedroom. She always empties the pockets of his suits, you know.”

For want of something better to do, they discussed old Margaret’s incredible enterprise in the matter of the baggage claim check and the black bag. They agreed that she must have found the claim check in the tan suit shortly after the first visit of the police; to old Maggie, Irish-born, to whom “police” and “rebel-hunters” would forever be synonymous, at the same time loyal unto death to Ashton McKell, the sight of the claim check must have triggered her instinct for trouble, and she had simply secreted it to keep it out of the hands of the law. After Ashton’s arrest she had sneaked down to Grand Central, found all her fears confirmed when, in return for the check, she was handed the little black bag, and promptly enlisted her sister as a confederate, hiding the bag in her sister’s flat for no other reason than to keep it from being found by the authorities, who were searching everything pertaining to McKell.

“Hers not to reason why,” said Dane. “Good old Maggie.”

“Something’s about to break,” said O’Brien alertly. “Look at what’s going on at the D.A.’s table . . . I was right There goes the bailiff into the judge’s chambers. The jury’s probably reached a verdict.” They had.

Not guilty.

* * *

There was a frantic

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